If A Potential Employer Makes This Promise, Don't Take The Job

When my daughter officially entered toddlerhood, I found myself making frequent comparisons between her behavior and that of my company’s CEO. Both were highly unpredictable and stubbornly unresponsive to reasonable requests. Both behaved as though they were the center of the universe and were prone to temper tantrums when they didn’t get their way.

But at the end of the day, I had far more patience and grace (which, admittedly, was not always much) for my daughter than I did for my boss. For one thing, she was 18 months old. For another, I had birthed her from my loins.

You could say that the CEO of that particular company treated his underlings “like family,” and you wouldn’t be entirely inaccurate. He made rules that were arbitrarily enforced. He yelled at us and took us for granted. He played favorites. He set high expectations that were often unreasonable and then shamed us when we failed to meet them.

Of course, I’m well aware that this is not what HR videos mean when they claim, “We’re like family!”

What these companies are trying to convey, of course, is that they look out for their own and support one another through thick and thin. The subtext is, “We’ve got your back,” and oh yeah, we’ll also throw a summer barbecue, give you a Christmas present, and maybe you’ll get cake on your birthday.

But these clichéd claims ring hollow, despite the astonishing frequency with which they are still bandied about. The lesson we keep learning the hard way is that most companies, even many so-called “family-run” companies, definitely do not have our backs.

They will support us as long as we make them money and we don’t anger the wrong people. They will demand our loyalty and the majority of our waking workweek hours, but if we become temporarily overwhelmed by personal challenges or if we inadvertently get on the bad side of someone with power, then we’re promptly shown the door.

As it turns out, we are expendable, always were. But we should never take it personally because hey, “it’s business.”

Funny how companies tell you, “We’re like family” when you’re walking in the door and, “It’s just business,” when you’re walking out.

Back when most family-run businesses were passed down through generations, younger family members often worked long hours for not-so-great pay.

But they had skin in the game because they knew they were in line to inherit the business and one day become owners themselves.

Today, most of us still work long hours for not-so-great pay. But we don’t have any skin in the game. There is no pathway to ownership, and only 14% of us have access to pension plans, compared to 60% in the 1980s. Likewise, a paltry 10% of us are union members, half as many as there were 50 years ago.

The unapologetic extraction of labor from workers is, of course, not a new story. But it’s a story that hasn’t gotten much better over time, and in many regards, it’s gotten worse. Our federal minimum wage has remained stagnant since 2009, and the United States still ranks the worst for employee benefits among all high-income countries in the world.

American workers are getting increasingly fed up, as evidenced by The Great Resignation and voluntary turnover rates that have increased by 88% since 2010. But by and large, companies aren’t responding in meaningful ways. Sure, some are making feeble attempts to beef up their benefits packages. They’re revisiting their core values and creating slick new HR videos that talk about how they’ll treat you “like family.”

But they’re still not giving us skin in the game. They’re not walking the talk. They treat us like family all right, but not in the ways they proclaim. They ask us to work extra hours for no additional pay. Much like my now-adolescent daughter, they seem to operate under the impression that they can generally treat us like crap. And that we should just take it.

Yet when their “family” claims are put to the true test — whether or not they will stand by an employee during challenging times — they fall short. Time and time again.

My partner is currently considering leaving his job at a family-run company that claims to treat him as one of their own.

They make a big show of their annual company picnic and Christmas party.

But if any employee exceeds their meager PTO and therefore becomes less profitable to the company, they better watch out. If they wrestle with personal health challenges, as my partner has, or occasionally have to stay home to attend to a sick child, as my partner has, or need some time after the death of a parent, as my partner did, their days are numbered.

Of course, the company will say that he left “voluntarily,” and that he couldn’t handle the demands of the job.

It was a similar story at a family-run nonprofit I worked at in Washington, D.C. I was a rising star until I went and had a baby. I returned to work after 10 scant weeks of maternity leave but had the nerve to work part-time for four additional weeks, which clearly showed upper management where my priorities lay. When we moved to Portland, Oregon and I asked to work remotely, my request was denied, even though the same request was granted to a male, childfree employee not long after. I guess I left “voluntarily?”

As soon as an employer gets an inkling that work is not your all-consuming priority in life at all times because, God forbid, you have things like your children and your health that require attention from time to time, they will eventually show you the door. Then they will claim that you walked out of your volition.

The lack of loyalty to and regard for employees is baked into the very ownership structure of so many American companies, which either pay dividends to a sole owner or answer to a separate body of shareholders far removed from day-to-day operations.

Companies don’t want to give you skin in the game because they still operate by the antiquated notion that power is a scarce resource that should be concentrated in the hands of the few. And the few that cling to this power are hopelessly out of touch.

They are the ones forcing workers back to the office even when these same workers are begging for hybrid and remote work options. They are the ones paying lip service to DEI when it’s en vogue but not sharing power with women and people of color in any substantive way. They are the ones refusing to consider shorter workweeks, better PTO-paid sick leave, or any of the myriad benefits that are commonly offered in other high-income countries.

At my worker-owned cooperative, we don’t make cheesy claims about treating our workers “like family,” but if we did, these claims would ring far less hollow. All employees, regardless of their position, have a path to ownership and access to a healthy benefits package, which we are constantly evaluating and collectively attempting to improve.

Of course, unsurprisingly, worker-owned cooperatives are far less prevalent in the United States than they are in other countries, with only about 0.004% of U.S. workers currently employed at one.

A company doesn’t necessarily have to be employee-owned to treat its workers well, but having a shared stake helps. That’s what family is, after all — a collection of people related by blood and marriage who have a shared stake in helping one another out, even if they sometimes drive one another nuts.

If A Potential Employer Makes This Promise, Don't Take The Job

At the very least such a claim calls for a healthy dose of skepticism and a few key follow-up questions.

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